Find the biggest files taking up space on your Mac

OK, so this happens to me all the time. I start installing a new app and suddenly I run out of space. Normally, I'll just Empty my Trash Bin or delete a few files but oftentimes, I need to find files that are large in size that I'd like to delete or back up on my external drive. This is probably the easiest way to do this.

GUI Solution

  1. First hit Command + F on your desktop.
  • Follow these steps below:


Terminal Solution

Solution 1

du -sk * | sort -rn | head

Solution 2

Find all files that have a size >= 100MB

sudo find / -type f -size +100000k -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{ print $9 ": " $5 }'

Solution #3

find . -type f -exec ls -s {} \; | sort -n -r | head -5

Resources